Friday, December 21, 2007

Mr. Coffee IDS77 Electric Coffee Grinder Review

Konichiwa!

Coffee Maker Review: Mr. Coffee IDS77 Electric Coffee GrinderRating: 4.5 stars out of 5 for a simple design and very small price.Price: $20

This one is definitely for the coffee lover! The Mr. Coffee IDS77 Electric Coffee Grinder is for the coffee enthusiast who loves to pick their own coffee beans and grind them to taste. I’ll spill all the beans in my Mr. Coffee Electric Coffee Grinder IDS77 Review.

ProsAt $20, Mr Coffee’s IDS77 Coffee Grinder is very reasonably priced. Users can grind enough beans to make up to 12 cups of coffee. This machine is great for grinding all types of coffee based drinks from espresso to your run of the mill cup of coffee. (Just for your reference, coffee makers often require specific grind requirements to achieve maximum flavor. Check your manual or do a little online research to understand your coffee maker and grind requirements.) Mr. Coffee has also gone to great lengths to make cleaning the IDS77 Coffee Grinder easy to clean by including a Chamber Maid cleaning system with bowl scraper to remove coffee from the grinder. The grinding chamber is dishwasher safe. Your Sensei also likes the extremely simple and intuitive controls; push a button and grind, the way EVERYTHING should be. Like all the products your Sensei endorses, customers usually say “my Mr. Coffee IDS77 Coffee Grinder worked better than I expected.” Despite having 40 reviews, there’s only been a single 1 star rating, a very impressive track record!

ConsCapacity could be great, not ideal for grinding large amounts of coffee for parties.

Final AnalysisThis is not a professional grade coffee grinder by any means, however it’s ideal for the home coffee enthusiast. There are enough coarseness settings to accommodate a wide range of preferences and the price is extremely small. The Consumer Sensei considers the Mr. Coffee IDS77 Coffee Maker a strong buy, especially for bargain hunters.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Mr Coffee FTX21 Coffee Maker Review

Anyone who has ever poured through an entire product line knows some models are good and some models are plagued with problems, even if they’re made by the same company. Once in a while an excellent manufacturer will put out something defective, unworthy of your consumer dollars. Mr Coffee, unfortunately, has had put out one of those products. The Mr. Coffee FTX21 12 Cup Programmable Coffee Maker pleases at least half of the people who buy it, however, the FTX21 has a high defect rate.

ProsI tend to believe there’s good in all products, except for books. I’m not a fan of words; I’m a fan of heart. Books are all fact and no heart. Never mind I make my living writing words. Anyway, there’s plenty of good in the Mr Coffee FTX21. The Consumer Sensei likes the temperature controlled warming plate which means you can adjust the temperature your coffee is warmed at. (I like my joe warm, not boiling, very useful feature.) The FTX21 also makes up to 12 cups of coffee at a time, great for caffeine addicted families and small offices! The Mr. Coffee FTX21 Coffee Maker also includes a water filtration system, you don’t have to use it, but it’s nice to know it’s there. That’s about all I have on the good, on to the bad.

ConsWell, the pros are only good if your Mr. Coffee Coffee Maker works. Unfortunately, we’ve read too many user reviews complaining that their brand new coffee maker mysteriously stopped making coffee 2 months after they bought it. (Sounds like the makings of a very bad and much unwanted I Robot sequel to me.) I’m not going to write about the steam spewing, leaking, and defective warming plates, you can read about those from users on Amazon. I would rather talk about the cons of units that actually work. Let’s say you buy one, and it does work. Still, there are some flaws in the FTX21 Coffee Maker I feel my readers should know about before they decide to purchase one. No clock battery; if the electricity goes out for a split second, so does the clock.

Final AnalysisI can’t say much in favor of the Mr. Coffee FTX21 Coffee Maker in this review except the price is fair. Well, I guess that’s not a good thing, it’s an “okay” thing. I’m not saying Mr. Coffee is a poor company or deceitful either. They just dropped the ball, happens to every company. Hopefully they’ll learn from their mistake and come out with a better coffee maker to replace the awful FTX21 soon. If they consistently worked, the FTX21 would warrant at least 4 stars out of 5, however, the shoddy nature of the Mr. Coffee FTX21 deserves not even a single star. 1 star reviews outnumber 5 star reviews 9 – 7 at the moment, enough for me to advise my readers to stay as far away from this unit as possible!

Mr. Coffee DRX5 Coffee Maker Reivew

Once again the Consumer Sensei has decided to explore the world of Coffee Makers. Today I bring you one of the highest rated coffee makers on the market, the Mr. Coffee DRX5 Coffee Maker. If you’re like me you stumble out of bed and demand a cup of caffeine, or uh, coffee in the morning. The Mr. Coffee DRX5 is an excellent coffee maker for 1-2 coffee drinkers. It prepares up to 4 cups of coffee at a time, includes a timer for automatically starting and stopping coffee making, 1 hour warmer auto shutoff, and see through water level windows for accurate water measurements.

ProsI’m not going to lie, if you have several coffee guzzlers in the home, the DRX5 by Mr. Coffee is definitely not for you. It’s designed to be small and compact and serve people with very little space or a very small taste for coffee. However, if you’re living the single life or you’re the only person who likes coffee, you’ll appreciate the modest 4 cup capacity of the DRX5. Users who purchased this item rave about the schedule timer. Users can program the coffee maker to automatically begin brewing up to 24 hours in advance; wake up to the smell of fresh coffee every morning!

ConsI already touched on this, but it’s small. If you have 3 or more people in the home, invest in a larger coffee maker, unless you’re the type of person who likes eating in front of people, then by all means, by the Mr. Coffee DRX5 Coffee Maker.

Final AnalysisThe Mr. Coffee DRX5 is great for people at a budget, coming in at just under $20. It’s small, compact, and has several nifty features including the ability to automatically schedule coffee brewing. The best feature of the DRX5 Coffee Maker is also its greatest weakness, a 4 cup coffee capacity. If you drink coffee on occasion or drink just a couple cups a day, it’s a great bargain. The Consumer Sensei has determined the Mr. Coffee DRX5 Coffee Maker has earned 4 stars out of 5.